My second project, lighting for my bead blasting cabinet

[Gravydog]

That lighting update sure is slick, As many of those harbor freight and other copy types of blast cabinets that are out in use , I bet if you made a kit for your light system, it would sell. I know I would buy one ! Great idea and great job making it !

OK, I'm looking for a reality check here. I am actually interested in maybe making up some of these for sale because there are a lot of these cabinets out there. Brino's suggestion of 3D printed corner blocks is very intriguing as well. My question is, how much would people actually be willing to pay for this? Everyone, please chime in with what a ready-to-go kit that would only need to be screwed together would be worth to you, shipping included? Thanks very much.

Rob

 

[C-Bag]

This is always the tough part. You have a good design but what do you need $$ wise to want to keep doing it? It sounds like there is a bit of hand work with cutting the tubes apart and soldering connections. It would seem you could offer the kits in different level of completeness. Like just offer the 3D printed corners with the magnets with a link where to buy the tubes and power supply. Your thread here can be the guide how to assemble.

The next level would be all pieces just assemble.

The big unknown is do you invest in a 3D printer to cut down on the big amount of machining? I'm sure you have gone over this in your calculations. The really tough parts are competing with the prices HF charges for the cabinet in the first place. Because it would seem you'd need $70-$80 for a kit and like my cab was only $110.

 

[brino]

I would hate to discourage you at all.......but how standard are the cabinet sizes?

Would you offer multiple sizes? I guess the plastic corners could be the same, just change the lengths of the LED strips.

-brino

 

[Gravydog]

I would hate to discourage you at all.......but how standard are the cabinet sizes?

Would you offer multiple sizes? I guess the plastic corners could be the same, just change the lengths of the LED strips.

-brino

I believe I would just target the many HF cabinets out there but the dimensions of the rectangle that the LED strips lend themselves to (cutting on a division of ten LEDs) seem like they would fit many similar size cabinets. I have pretty much fully designed the corner blocks (with improvements) in my head already, just need the printer!

Rob

 

[Gravydog]

.....and I bet those corners could be 3D printed for pennies in material!
-brino

OK, I did a lot of online research and I just placed an order for an "Original Prusa i3 MK3S" kit from the Czech Republic. Many inferior kits are sold by others using the same name without "Original". It's supposed to take 8 hours or more to assemble, so that will be interesting. It's considered by many to be the best 3D printer available for under $1000. My wife isn't happy but I blamed you.

Rob

 

[brino]

My wife isn't happy but I blamed you.

That's okay, I can shoulder that blame.

I am sure that spending time during assembly on careful alignment will pay off with much better printing results.
Does your kit have auto-leveling for the table?

-brino

 

[Gravydog]

Yes, it does. I think it's kind of a misnomer because rather than the bed leveling, the print head is dynamically moved in the Z axis to compensate for unevenness as it prints.

I have been looking at a lot of free 3D modeling software for designing parts and it looks like it will be a steep learning curve as not much seems obvious or intuitive to me. I will get there, though.

Rob

 

[Flyinfool]

OK, I did a lot of online research and I just placed an order for an "Original Prusa i3 MK3S" kit from the Czech Republic. Many inferior kits are sold by others using the same name without "Original". It's supposed to take 8 hours or more to assemble, so that will be interesting. It's considered by many to be the best 3D printer available for under $1000. My wife isn't happy but I blamed you.

That printer looks awesome, I love the 5 color head option.
I was going to get a 3D printer this year, but now I may have to save up a bit more for this one. If it were just a bit bigger it would be a no brainier and I would be hooked.

 

[Gravydog]

That printer looks awesome, I love the 5 color head option.
I was going to get a 3D printer this year, but now I may have to save up a bit more for this one. If it were just a bit bigger it would be a no brainier and I would be hooked.

I ordered it from the Czech Republic on a Sunday night and it arrived at my house (near Seattle) mid-day Thursday by DHL. As soon as you open the box and see how well packed and organized everything is it's obvious this is a first-class operation all the way. Quality parts all bagged with detailed labels, super precision metal parts, big glossy color assembly manual, all stainless fasteners (and there are a LOT of them) and even a bag of spares of every kind of fastener. It even comes with a bag of gummi bears and it tells you how many you can eat after completing each section. And it works! (After many hours of assembly). I am so glad I stepped up for this one, I couldn't be more impressed with this company, I would recommend it to anyone.

Rob

 

[Gravydog]

So, I made up a number of these with 3D-printed corner brackets and have listed some on eBay but no sales yet. I went with "LED Blast cabinet lighting" in the category "sandblasters" but I'm not getting a ton of views. If you were looking for something like this, what kind of search terms would you maybe use and what category would you expect it to be in? Thanks!

Rob